In recent years it has become increasingly popular to treat hair, and particularly women's hair, by coloring or tinting selected strands of hair while separated and isolated from the remaining hair strands. The processes for carrying out such hair treatment are generally termed "highlighting," "tinting," "streaking," "frosting" or the like.
A number of techniques have been developed for such treatment of hair which provide varying degrees of success depending on the skill of the operator and other such factors. The simplest method of bleaching or coloring hair to achieve a contrasting color is hair painting wherein the operator or beautician simply applies a liquid bleach or dye to selected areas of the head of hair to add the desired highlighting. In this method it is generally desired to color or bleach only the uppermost strands of hair. The liquid dye or bleach, however, tends to reach underlying hair, or may even penetrate the entire depth of the hair, which it is not desired to treat and, thus, limits the control needed for achieving the desired results.
Attempts to achieve greater control of the coloring or bleaching process have been suggested including, for example, using pastry chef type bags for applying thickened coloring or bleaching agents to the desired strands of hair or using various devices for isolating selected strands of hair to be treated from the head of hair. A well known technique involves covering the head with a cap having a plurality of apertures through which strands of hair are drawn by means of a hook. The strands of hair which project through the apertures are treated with bleach or dye while the hair remaining under the cap is isolated therefrom and, thus, not treated. After treatment, the cap is removed from the head and drawn away from the treated strands. While this technique is widely used and generally achieves the desired results, it is time consuming, may be uncomfortable for the person wearing the cap and since the bag is not transparent, the operator can not see which strands should be chosen for treatment.
Another widely used process is that known as "foil highlighting" in which a sheet of metal foil, typically aluminum, is used to support selected strands of hair separated from the remaining hair together with the desired bleach, dye or the like treating agent, generally in paste form. After applying the treating agent to the segregated strands of hair, the foil sheet is folded around the treated strands of hair in a manner to form a crimped envelope or package isolating them from adjacent strands of hair while the color treating agent effects the desired color change. The foil envelope is thereafter removed. Normally, a plurality of separate portions of hair are treated in this manner and this aggravates the problem of holding the foil in place, both during application of the treating agent and during processing. Great care and more than one pair of hands are required to hold the plurality of foil sheets in place during the treatment of a head of hair, which problem may become even more difficult when the person is placed under a hair dryer.
More recently, a number of other devices have been developed for use in highlighting hair or the like. For the most part, these devices such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,800,811; 4,196,741; 4,552,159; 4,637,411 and 4,672,983, enable isolation of selected strands, application of a hair treating agent thereto, and wrapping of the treated strands so as to maintain them isolated from the remaining hair during the treating process.
While the devices disclosed in the prior art may be generally acceptable for the purpose of achieving desired highlighting or the like hair coloring effects, they generally require a substantial number of manual manipulative steps during use which is time consuming, there is a tendency for leakage of the treating agent unless the process is carefully carried out by experienced personnel, and the devices tend to separate from the hair when wet unless separate fasteners are employed, which fasteners further increase the cost and manipulative steps involved in using such device.
It will be apparent that there is a need for a device that is simple and inexpensive to fabricate and which can be reliably used by one person with a minimum number of manipulative steps.